As principal of Roach Middle School in Frisco ISD, Terri Gladden has seen her campus’ enrollment expand and contract from year to year.

In the 2006-07 school year, Gladden oversaw 800 students. The next school year, attendance increased dramatically to 1,200 students due to the housing boom in the area, Gladden said.

“We had to bring in five portable buildings, which equaled 10 classrooms, and we did not even have enough lockers to accommodate all the students,” she said.

The changes didn’t stop there. Relief came in 2008-09 after a new middle school, Scoggins, opened in 2008, taking with it hundreds of students from Roach. This year, 809 students are enrolled at Roach, but the return to a smaller student body doesn’t mean administrators have time to rest.

Roach is located in an area bounded by Eldorado Parkway, Virginia Parkway, Preston Road and Independence Parkway in Frisco which was found to be the best for student achievement gains, according to a data analysis by The Dallas Morning News.

The study measured student improvement year over year, based on data from 2009-11. By looking at student gains, the study was better able to measure the impact schools had on their students.

Gladden and other principals in the area attribute student achievement to keeping the campuses relatively small in order to provide individual student attention.

Over the years, Roach has received varied academic accountability ratings from the Texas Education Agency — it was “recognized” from 2006 to 2008; dropped to “academically acceptable” in 2009; surged to “exemplary” in 2010 and was “recognized” again in 2011, the last year for which ratings are available. Gladden said she believes the rating downgrade in 2009 could have been caused by overcrowding at the school.

“We used to cover such a crazy demographic area,” she said. “We had 12 school buses and it would take some kids almost an hour to get home. And [the kids] who lived that far away did not feel like it was their school.”

Nearby Maus Middle School, which opened in 2010, earned a rating of “exemplary” for 2011; neighboring Sem and Tadlock elementary schools have been rated “exemplary” the past three years. Heritage High School, into which Roach and Maus feed, has remained “recognized” since opening in 2009.

School board officials recognized the rapid growth early on, thanks to demographers’ predictions for the district, Gladden said.

“Our focus instructionally is we are committed to a small schools concept,” said Richard Wilkinson, deputy superintendent of business and operations. “We believe because we keep our classroom sizes small, we can focus on meeting needs of all students.”

School officials continued to build new schools to maintain a student-teacher ratio of 15 to 1. But when Scoggins opened to relieve Roach’s high enrollment, the remedy was temporary.

In 2010, Roach was at capacity once again at nearly 1,000 students, so school board officials agreed to build Maus, the third middle school in the area. Gladden’s vice principal, Corey McClendon, was then hired as Maus Middle School’s principal.

McClendon said he attributes student success at Maus to the “newness” of the school.

“The kids, they have a lot of ownership of the school, the ones that have been here since sixth grade,” he said.

According to McClendon, Maus is also quickly approaching capacity and is predicted to have 800 students enrolled next year.

The elementary schools that feed in to both Roach and Maus middle schools have also split enrollment in the past 10 years because of rapid growth in enrollment.

Sem Elementary School opened its doors seven years ago and, after only two years, reached capacity with about 600 students, according to principal Diana High.

High was hired as principal in 2008, when half of the school’s students were sent to Tadlock Elementary.

“With smaller campuses, it allows us to talk to all the students and form connections,” High said.

To meet the demands of increasing student enrollment, the district plans to open one new high school and two new elementary schools in fall 2014. In addition, one new high school, one new middle school and one new elementary school are expected to welcome students in fall 2015.

And construction of Independence High School, Frisco ISD’s seventh high school, is already underway. It’s growing the district’s campus structure that will ensure small class sizes and student success, Wilkinson said.

“I think from a district-wide standpoint, when we went back and looked over the last several years, our small-schools concept contributes to overall success of students not just academically, but with the students’ extracurricular activities and co-curricular activities,” Wilkinson said.